I last saw Henry VIII at the Barbican, London, in
1994, and it has not been staged at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival since 1984.
The year 2009 marks the 500th anniversary of the accession of Henry VIII, and
one might have expected more anniversary productions of Shakespeare's play,
especially as it is now rarely undertaken except by companies with a commitment
to performing the entire canon. The contemporary neglect contrasts with the
play’s popularity in the nineteenth century theatres, when there was a greater
appetite for the staging of epic dramas, the more elaborate the better.

The size of the cast of the OSF production, numbering over
twenty actors in all, gives an indication of the large scale nature of this
production. That ambition was carried through in the imaginative use of the
available space in the OSF’s outdoor theatre, in the sumptuous costumes, and in
the many visual treats offered to the audience. The text of Henry VIII sometimes
calls for spectacular scenes and at other points has characters tell us of
splendid events which have happened offstage. This production, through careful
re-working of the text, tried to make the spectacle take place onstage whenever
possible. It was evident that there had been a great deal of attention to the
text as well as to the staging, and it is worth charting those changes in
detail.

Many changes were made to enhance the level of spectacle in
the play. This production did not include the Prologue or the Epilogue, but did
stage the Field of the Cloth of Gold as a magnificent opening tableau, so that the
first line of the text to be spoken was I.i.46. Good use of the space was made
in II.i., in that Henry, rather than being discovered by the drawing of a
curtain, was in plain view on the upper level, at prayer as a pious monarch:
thus, we were constantly reminded of Henry in that posture even while other
characters were talking of him. In addition, at the beginning of IV.i, the
decision was taken to actually show the Coronation, rather than have the
Gentlemen describe it. The most imaginative of these changes involved the
casting of the character Griffith: in IV.i, we have, again, a scene in which
one character tells another of off-stage events, in this case the death of
Wolsey. Rather than stage the events themselves, the production cast a deaf
actor, Howie Seago in the role of Griffith, with the effect that, as he signed
his narrative to Katherine, she spoke his words, mediated through her own
reactions.

Other textual changes were designed to simplify the play’s
narrative. The complexity of the opening act was simplified by the removal of
many of the references to those involved in intrigues: there are many names to cope
with in the full text, and in this production we lost references to Hopkins,
Perk and de la Car. Buckingham was also given his real family name of Stafford
in I.ii., rather than the name Bohun which is in the text, thus sparing the
audience some puzzlement as to who this Bohun might be. There was also some
redistribution of lines and merging of roles in the early scenes: the lines of
Abergevenny, for example, were given to Norfolk. This in no way impeded the
main trajectory of the plot.

Some lengthy speeches were also cut: the long list of
“articles” with which Wolsey was charged in III.ii was pared down, as was the
whole of Katherine’s dream vision. The opening of the final Act was re-shaped,
so that Norfolk replaced Lovell in V.i, the business of Dr. Butts and the King
spying on the Council Meeting went from V.ii, and V.iii was deleted completely.
In the final scene, Anne was present onstage, and therefore Henry’s final
speech was amended. Cranmer's lengthy encomium on Elizabeth and James was also
pruned.

The production used the different levels of the Elizabethan
Stage with great elegance. The play opened with Wolsey, as puppet-master, on a
level above the rest of the players, and, at the interval (taken after the end
of Act II) the four principals were placed on stage on different levels: Henry
downstage centre; Katherine above; Wolsey stage left; Anne stage right.
However, the loveliest staging effect (and one that it took time to realize was
happening) was the projections onto the panels of the reconstructed Elizabethan
tiring house; these changed from scene to scene, to indicate the nature of the
location in which the action was taking place.

Both spectacle and clever staging were used during the trial
of Katherine (II.iv). The full ensemble appeared on stage, but the focus was
clearly on Katherine, an effect cleverly contrived by having Henry be seated on
his throne on top of the vomitarium, thus being onstage and offstage at the
same time. There was a real poignancy in the performance by Elijah Alexander in
the scene: a sense of this youthful Henry's lost love for his Queen.

The production contained other excellent performances. Vilma
Silva was flawless as Queen Katherine, playing the part with a Spanish accent
that emphasised her vulnerability as a stranger in a foreign land. Michael
Elich’s excellent performance as Buckingham was an interesting reminder of his
role as an earlier Buckingham in Richard III at the OSF back in 2005. Anthony
Heald, who plays Shag (Shakespeare) in Equivocation, made a fine de
casibus hero of Wolsey in this production, and got the biggest laugh of the
evening (for a line which is not even intended to be funny) when, in III.ii, he
dismisses Anne disparagingly as a “Lutheran”: I do not recall this joke working
so well in London in 1994, but then, of course, the Lutheran church is still
alive and well in the USA.

This was a very successful production in terms of its visual
appeal and its use of space. It seemed a bold move to stage such a rarely-performed
work in the Festival’s largest theatre, but, on reflection, it would not have
been nearly as effective without the opportunity to work for spectacle. My
sense is that this was not a production which was to the taste of all
audiences, but, as with Titus Andronicus in 2002, OSF decided not to
hide away a lesser-known work on a smaller stage, but to present it with
courage and commitment, and with an actress of considerable calibre in its
central role.

Responses to this piece intended for the
Readers' Forum may be sent to the Editor at M.Steggle@shu.ac.uk.